‘One Nation, One Election’: How panel proposes to synchronise polls, fill gaps

Expected as it was, the high level committee (HLC) on simultaneous elections, headed by former president of India, Ram Nath Kovind, has recommended synchronising of polls to the Lok Sabha, all state assemblies and local administrative bodies (municipal corporations, panchayats), albeit without specifying a time-frame for doing so.

The ‘One Nation, One Election’ HLC, which also includes as its members Union Home Minister Amit Shah, former Rajya Sabha Leader of Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad, senior advocate Harish Salve, constitution expert Subhash Kashyap, Sanjay Kothari and NK Singh, submitted its report to President Droupadi Murmu, on Thursday (March 14).

The report, running into 18,345 pages (281 pages of the main report and the rest as annexure), makes a detailed case for conducting simultaneous polls to the Lok Sabha, state assemblies and local bodies as well as for the compilation of a Single Electoral Roll for all elections. The panel has also identified a slew of amendments that are needed to be made to the Constitution and other relevant laws in order to roll out synchronised elections.

“The Committee is of the unanimous opinion that there should be simultaneous elections in the country,” the report states at the outset and goes on to lay down the framework for doing so.

Three-step framework

The panel has recommended a three-step framework for synchronising all direct elections as and when all necessary legal requirements (amendments to the Constitution and other laws) and logistical prerequisites are completed for doing so.

The first step requires the President of India to issue a notification recognising the date of the first sitting of the House of the People (Lok Sabha) after a General Election as the “Appointed date”. Subsequently, all state legislatures that were constituted “after the appointed date shall come to an end on the expiry of the full term” of the Lok Sabha.

“The tenure of all such Houses (state assemblies) will expire with the tenure of the House of the People. For the constitution of the new Houses, the Election Commission of India will conduct simultaneous elections for the House of the People and the state legislative assemblies together,” the report said.

'Appointed date'

This essentially means that once an “appointed date” is fixed, the next Lok Sabha polls will then be held simultaneously with elections for all state legislatures, irrespective of whatever tenure may remain at the time for any functional state assembly In simple terms, hypothetically, if simultaneous polls are rolled out from April-May 2029 (assuming that the first day of the Lok Sabha constituted following the upcoming elections is notified as the appointed date), then it would not matter whether a Tamil Nadu (where the next polls are due in 2026) or a Madhya Pradesh Assembly (due for fresh polls in 2028) has, at that time, months or years left of its current tenure. As per the HLC’s recommendation, all state legislatures will stand dissolved and ready for polls in April-May 2029.

The third step is to synchronise local body elections with the Lok Sabha and state assemblies. The HLC has recommended that elections for all municipalities and Panchayats may be held “within 100 days” of the holding simultaneous polls for the Lok Sabha and State Legislatures.

New poll terminologies

Critics of simultaneous polls and many legal luminaries have, over the years, expressed scepticism over how the poll panel would navigate complications arising out of a hung verdict or a premature dissolution of the Lok Sabha or an assembly and ensure that the cycle of synchronised elections isn’t broken. To address such concerns, the HLC has recommended suitable amendments to the Constitution to recognise different kinds of tenures for the Lok Sabha, assemblies and local bodies.

The Kovind-led panel HLC has offered “terminologies” such as full term, general election, mid-term election – all currently in use to denote a five-year tenure for a House, regular election and a by-election, respectively, and “unexpired term”.

The HLC report says while a full term must mean a five-year tenure, calculated from the “appointed date”, for the Lok Sabha and state legislatures, an “unexpired term” would denote a scheme when any of these elected bodies are “dissolved sooner than upon the expiry of their full term, then the period between its date of dissolution and the period of five years from the date appointed for its first meeting”.

Solution for hung verdict situation

The report goes on to recommend that in case of a hung verdict or premature dissolution of any assembly due to an incumbent government losing a trust vote or a no-confidence motion or “any other event”, then though fresh elections will be held for such a House, the tenure of that House will still end with the term of the Lok Sabha.

“The Constitution would have to be amended to introduce the concepts of a full term and an unexpired period, and provisions made so that the elections held where the House or an Assembly is dissolved sooner than its full term would be considered to be a mid-term election. The election held after the expiry of five years would be considered a General Election... If, however, the House of the People or a State Legislative Assembly is dissolved sooner than its period of five years from the date appointed for its first meeting, a mid-term election would be held for reconstituting the House or the State Legislative Assembly, as the case may be, but the term of the House or the State Legislative Assembly so constituted in a mid-term election, would be for the remaining unexpired period... In this manner, at the end of five years, the House of the People and all the state legislative assemblies would reach the end of their tenure at the same time, and be ready for a General Election held simultaneously,” the report said.

Single electoral roll for all polls

The panel has also recommended that a single electoral roll must be made valid for all elections instead of the current practice where the Election Commission maintains its own electoral rolls while state electoral offices keep their own records. Discrepancies in the two electoral rolls has been a common complaint by all political parties over the years and Opposition outfits such as the Congress, the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) have often cried foul over alleged “mass deletion” of voters’ names from electoral rolls during elections to prevent their supporters from voting in their favour.

Stating that “electoral rolls are mostly prepared by the State Election Commissions after taking them from the Chief Election Commissioner” and that such preparations “lead to duplication... and in a few cases, errors in the list”, the HLC report said it recognises the “significance of a Single Electoral Roll and Single Elector’s Photo Identity Card (EPIC)... to safeguard the rights of voters.”

The panel has recommended that Article 325 of the Constitution “be suitably amended, to enable the preparation of a Single Electoral Roll and EPIC by the Election Commission of India, in consultation with State Election Commissions.”

Proposed amendments

The report also lists the litany of amendments that the Constitution will require – either with mandatory ratification by the State Legislatures or without it – and also the changes that will need to be made in other laws to enable synchronisation of all elections. Firstly, the HLC notes that a “Constitution Amendment Bill shall be introduced in the Parliament amending Article 83 (Duration of Houses of Parliament) and Article 172(Duration of State Legislatures) of the Constitution”. These amendments, the panel says, will “not need ratification by the states”. Another proposed amendment to the Constitution “for insertion of Article 324A for elections to municipalities and panchayats”, will require ratification by the states, the report said.

The panel noted that amendments will also be required in Section 5 of the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi Act, 1991, Section 5 of the Government of Union Territories Act, 1963 for the legislative assembly of Puducherry and Section 17 of the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019. These sections deal with the duration of the tenure of the assemblies of Delhi, Puducherry and Jammu and Kashmir.